Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Getting a Bit More Sociable About Social Media

After writing my thoughts on the impact of collaborators on
my personal family history research progress—and thanks in part to inspiration
arising from reader comments—I want to revisit that topic. This time, though, I
want to take it from a different angle: the “social” angle of online research
venues.

In particular, let’s look at Ancestry.com, since I just got
to spend a weekend frolicking through my family data there.

I think most people have a handle on what Ancestry.com has
to offer. Most people presume it is an online opportunity to post one’s
personal genealogy research, and concurrently a way to grow those results by
tapping into the wide variety of searchable data resident in the Ancestry
system.

The more people who post their family trees to Ancestry.com,
of course, the more resources—in the form of matches—available to other
Ancestry.com users.

Once an Ancestry.com member encounters that magical “match”
moment, there are a number of ways to connect with other researchers. Ancestry.com
has the mechanisms in place to make those collaborative connections.

For instance, I can immediately send a message to the other
member, explaining why I think we have a link.

Or, I can utilize a function Ancestry.com calls “Member
Connect,” by clicking on the “Connect with members” button on the right column
under the heading “Recent Member Connect Activity.” Or, a “Member Connect” tab
at the top of the page, under the ancestor’s profile section, brings me to a
page that more fully explains the functions available:

Member Connect will
help you stay in touch with other members who also happen to be researching
your ancestors. You'll be able to contact them, share research and be notified
when they add new content about your ancestors to their family trees.

A third way to collaborate is through the “Comments” tab,
once again at the top of the timeline, just under the ancestor’s name and above
the timeline section. Anyone may leave comments on any individual in your Ancestry.com tree—if
your tree may be seen publicly by those other Ancestry.com members.

And yet, how many people utilize these three functions of
Ancestry.com?

Here we have the near-equivalent of a social media outlet
custom designed for genealogy buffs, and yet, outside of the message-a-member
feature, I’ve yet to have had anyone come alongside any of my five family trees
posted on Ancestry.com to connect, make comments, or collaborate.

Knowing the program has these social resources embedded
within it, imagine the boost we could give to our own research—and the benefit
we could share with others pursuing our same lines.

Instead of sitting in isolation like monks in a secluded
ivory tower, diligently copying down data from ancient repositories, we can
reach out and digitally connect with other researchers—talk to them, compare
notes with them, even plan research strategies to divide and conquer those
remaining puzzles and family mysteries. And in the talking, we’d be doing it
with people who are already pre-selected for sharing the same specific focus we
have. Talk about the ability to zero in on the target.

And yet, I suspect there is something holding Ancestry.com
members back. What could it be? Is there a reticence in going up to a “stranger”
who is researching, say, our great-grandparents’ line, and mentioning, “Say, I have
that missing photo I know you’d love to have.” Or, “Are you sure you haven’t
mistaken thisJohn Jones for his cousin with the same name?”

Would that be just too forward a thing to do? On Ancestry?
If so, why? Wouldn’t we say something like that on Twitter? Or Facebook? Or on
those long-standing genealogy forums of the nineties?

I’m thinking Ancestry.com has a feature that would serve so
well as social lubricant for us genealogy aficionados—and that simultaneously
terrifies those very members.

Can that reticence be reversed? What do you think? Have you
ever used this feature at Ancestry? Has it made a difference for you in your
research?

The only downside to this scenario comes from the possibly
unintended consequences of widely promoting those free two-week trial periods.
To put it bluntly: when I find a match of a family member shared by my line and
someone else’s tree on Ancestry and I go to send that researcher a message,
only then do I see the note that the person’s online activity has not occurred
on Ancestry.com for maybe the last month. Or perhaps even months.

In other words, that researcher’s stint was over the minute
those two free weeks lapsed.

Lost contact.

Other than that, all of us who are Ancestry.com members may
be sitting on a versatile collaborative feature that would be infinitely more
helpful if we actually pulled it out of the proverbial tool kit and put it to
good use.

Above left: Fifteenth century Scriptorium, as represented in this drawing from the Project Gutenberg e-book of William Benham's Old Saint Paul's Cathedral, London: Seeley and Company; New York: Macmillan, 1902; courtesy Wikipedia; in the public domain.

N. B.: While I've discussed the commercial entity, Ancestry.com, in this post, there is no connection between the author of this post and the company referenced, other than as satisfied customer.

4 comments:

I admit to not using the features nearly enough. I have left comments when information is blatantly wrong, and I have contacted others just a few times. But I'm taking your advice with plans to do better.

For me - the features on Ancestry aren't well explained and I've no real sense of what something like "Member Connect" actually does. I've grown leary of "clicking on things" I don't "understand" over the years.

I also feel like a newbie/tyro in the field - and a hack dabbler at best... so I don't feel like I'm going to offer someone that's been in Ancestry for years or doing family research for years - much in the way of anything useful/helpful. Ii is intimidating to a newbie to be tossed in a group of folks that have 10-20 and even more years of research experience.

So between the two - "what does this do?" and "what can I add to an old hand" - I've not ventured that way.

For collaboration purposes, you actually have a lot to add to the mix. You may not have a long history of being in genealogy research, but you do know your way around.

Rather than focus on who has more genealogy experience, I like to think of collaboration as helping each other by offering our strong suits where others would appreciate it. Some people are strong on general history knowledge. Some are strong in internet research resources. Others are well versed in the professional standards of the genealogy world.

Granted, you are right about Ancestry not explaining these "Member Connect" features clearly--or in a more prominent place. And true, there is a wide open area between those two levels of expertise you cited.

I want to take those realms of latitude and experiment to see if we can find a place to add value to the research milieu. If there's another way to keep the "conversation" going between people researching mutual lines, it can help to fast-forward the process, don't you think?

About Me

It is my contention that, after a lifetime, one of the greatest needs people have is to be remembered. They want to know: have I made a difference?
I write because I can't keep for myself the gifts others have entrusted to me. Through what I've already been given--though not forgetting those to whom I must pass this along--from family I receive my heritage; through family I leave a legacy. With family I weave a tapestry. These are my strands.